(The following story by Matthew L. Wald appeared on the New York Times website on June 23.)
NEW YORK — In Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor, the railroad’s weakest link — a 90-year-old drawbridge across the Thames River in eastern Connecticut — was scheduled to carry its last train on Monday evening, as a four-day, round-the-clock marathon to replace the span was to begin.
The $83 million project, delayed for years by lack of money, is supposed to be completed by Friday night. Until then, most trains between New York and Boston will be canceled, but a few will detour through Hartford and Springfield, Mass. Amtrak will run some buses between New Haven and two locations east of the bridge, in Providence, R.I., and Kingston R.I., to connect with trains on either end. The railroad also was directing travelers to Greyhound and Peter Pan bus lines.
The bridge being replaced, connecting New London and Groton, was built from 1917 to 1919 for the old New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad. Several bridges of that vintage are in use around the country, but this one had exceptionally heavy traffic, both in terms of trains crossing over and shipping on the river below. Only 29 feet over the water at high tide, it opened more than 2,000 times in some years, often for submarines on their way to the nearby naval base and shipyard. And it handled about 36 passenger trains and two freight trains a day. The passenger trains included the high-speed Acela, which is relatively heavy and thus produces more damaging vibrations than other passenger trains.
The work has been repeatedly delayed, most recently because workers had trouble taking apart a rusty steel-and-concrete counterweight, weighing four million pounds, that allowed the 188-foot movable span to swing up like a drawbridge over a moat.
Over the last two years, engineers have built two towers over the tracks, one at each end of the span. The towers will hoist a new stretch of track, keeping it horizontal.
Railroad officials had feared that one day the old drawbridge would get stuck half open, neither fully up nor down, blocking rail and marine traffic.
“These bridges were made to last, maybe, 50 years,” said David Plowden, a photographer who specializes in trains and bridges. “We’ve kept them going,” he said. “Unfortunately, so many of them have not been maintained properly.”
A railway historian, William D. Middleton, said that bridges of that vintage were still in use in the Chicago area, but that they did not have to open as often or carry as much traffic as the one in Connecticut.
“The whole country has been living off investment that was made years ago,” David Gunn, a former president of Amtrak, said in a telephone interview. Mr. Gunn had campaigned for replacement of the Thames River bridge, which has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1987.
Motorists traveling north on Interstate 95 can see the bridge on the right as they travel over the highway bridge that connects New London and Groton.
A train leaving South Station in Boston at 9:45 p.m. was scheduled to be the bridge’s last, expected to cross the Thames around 11:25 p.m.